The beauty of contemporary art is that it gets everywhere. Every city wants its own art week or Biennale, and this trend shows that even in a challenging market, cities and countries recognise the power of art to put them on the map. Berlin Art Week has been running since 2012, but this was my first visit to the event, and I was thoroughly impressed by both the strength and depth of the art on offer and the number of exhibitions to see across the city, both in institutions and commercial art galleries.
The cavernous spaces of the Hamburger Bahnhof are hosting an epic opera by Petrit Halilaj that ties into his Kosovan heritage and reflects both the region’s centuries-old and recent history. The protagonists, a rooster and a fox, enact a Garden of Eden-esque story that becomes increasingly surreal, complete with a bright pink lake and helicopters.
Klára Hosnedlová’s massive tapestries greeted us as we entered the Hamburger, reflecting the history and the evolution of the Czech Republic, and its transition away from Communism. Not far away, the Julia Stoschek Foundation hosts a major survey show of Mark Leckey’s works, much larger than anything I’ve seen in the UK and includes all of his significant works.
Lukas Luzius Leichtle, Eindringling, Exhibition view, CCA Berlin, 2025. Photo: Diana Pfammatter/CCA Berlin
Two of my personal favourites were at some of the smaller museums. The Berlin Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) is located next to a semi-destroyed church and used to be its offices. It means the building is grade-listed, and so you must enter into a Brutalist building with all its wood-panelled offices intact. It’s the perfect setting for Lukas Luzius Leichtle’s close-up paintings of hands and backs, as most works either get a room to themselves or share with a couple of other works, heightening the intimacy of the pieces.
Another highlight is at Savvy Contemporary, hosting a group show about remittance – the process whereby workers in different countries send money to their families in their home countries. It includes a mix of artists who all comment on that legacy and the connection between their two home countries. Pegah Keshmirshekan focuses on the impossible bouquets in Dutch 17th and 18th-century paintings and how they often included a flower called the Imperial Rose, which is found in her home country, Iran.
Akshita Garud links home to food, with many two-ended spoons carrying foods that remind her of her South Asian residency, and Van Bo Le-Mentzel has created a living space within a shipping container for artworks, which he calls a wallidency. It’s inspired by the life of a Buddhist nun who lived in a tiny space in Hanover, and how she wanted to live freely and without being a burden. The exhibition is filled with inventive artworks that look at the responsibility and guilt that often accompany those who migrate to another country for economic reasons.
Akshita Garud’s installation is on show at Savvy Contemporary.
I was impressed as much by the spaces as the art, so even when the works didn’t feel as strong, it never felt like a wasted trip. Christelle Oyiri’s film that links history, monuments and music never quite manages to pull together a narrative that is under the surface, and parallels can clearly be drawn between the work and Arthur Jafa’s ‘Love is the Message, The Message is Death’. However, watching it in a darkened concrete structure that has the feel of an underground nightclub helps elevate it.
Issy Wood’s latest paintings are impressive but also lack a coherent narrative, but that’s easily swept aside when viewing them inside the tiled octagon of the Schinkel Pavilion. Gerd Rohling pulls plastics out of the Bay of Naples and presents them as ancient artefacts, in a clever nod to what we value. They are located in the Hermannplatz U-Bahn station, which is the perfect place to host them, given that the station’s yellow and grey-tiled design is just as eye-catching.
Commercial galleries also play a large part in Berlin art week, and one of my highlights was Pace’s space, which they share with Galerie Judin. It’s an old petrol station, so when you step into the space, there is a pond filled with koi and inside are the meditative artworks of Adam Pendleton. It’s the perfect respite if you’re all art-ed out trying to see everything.
Installation view, Adam Pendleton: spray light layer emerge, Pace Gallery, Berlin. © Adam Pendleton, courtesy Pace Gallery. Photo: Roman März
Kristin Hjellegjerde is hosting Lotte Keijzer’s paintings of the chairs that all evoke memories for her, from a potty her child used to a plastic chair placed in the sea and even a toilet seat – sometimes that’s where the best ideas come about. Another of the gallery’s artists, Ruprecht von Kauffman, has a museum exhibition at the nearby Haus am Lützowplatz filled with his large-scale paintings, filled with figures inhabiting train carriages and squares. It’s a show that feels at home in an urban setting, particularly as many of his works reference Berlin and he lives in the city.
Most art weeks and biennales position their events as cultural place-making, a reason for people to come from far and wide to see the art and everything else the city has to offer. Berlin isn’t the only city to have a wealth of museums and galleries; London, New York and Paris can easily compete. What makes it stand out for me is the affordability. The luxurious Dorint Kurfürstendamm Berlin hotel hosted me, and when I looked into extending my stay for a few days, I could do so for 150 Euros a night without booking long in advance. Try getting an equivalent central London hotel room for London Gallery Weekend or a hotel for the preview week of the Venice Biennale at that price.
I thoroughly enjoyed my first time at Berlin Art Week, and I may even come back on my own steam to take in future editions. It’s got a great mix of museum and gallery exhibitions, and my only regret is that I didn’t have longer in the city, as I probably only saw a quarter of what the week had to offer.
Berlin Art Week happens annually in September. This year, it ran from 10-14 September, but all the exhibitions mentioned in this piece remain open to visit.
Top Photo: Exhibition view of “Petrit Halilaj. An Opera Out of Time,” Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, September 11, 2025 – May 31, 2026. © Petrit Halilaj, 2025 / mennour, Paris, ChertLüdde, Berlin, and kurimanzutto, New York and Mexico City. Photo: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Jacopo La Forgia